Well, Caltrans closed my freeway exit today (Fell St in San Francisco). It's going to be replaced by a boulevard. The last exit to the center of San Francisco just got a mile shorter.

I've heard many arguments on the issue, and many make sense. But some of the supporters of this plan claim that the traffic will be better. I can't decide if this is a lie for their agenda, or if they are really that naive. No matter how well the traffic lights are timed, a mile of elevated freeway is 10 minutes faster than a mile of stoplight traffic. And during rush hour, it's just more lights for 40,000 vehicles to be idling at.

I don't know about ThinkPad 600s, but I am currently on my third battery for my Toshiba Tecra8000. Every year (just about on the dot in June) my battery dies and starts discharging extremely fast. One week it lasts two hours, the next one hour, the next 10 minutes.

I asked the support person about this, and he told me that it was a common problem. They basically expect that the battery will stop behaving after a year. Note that the battery warranty is about a year.

I've heard the apartheid comparison before, and it depresses
me that people take it seriously. If apartheid in South
Africa were repealed, the newly empowered population would
take their place in society, and South African people, white
and black, would do their best to improve the country for
everyone. This is, in fact, largely what happened.

If the Israelis totally free these camps, the newly
empowered population would respond by murdering Israelis.

It's not the same situation. Jewish settlers live in homes
vacated when the residents fled to Jordan during the War of
Independance. They left of their own free will, and when
Jordan turned them out, they came back.

Does this mean that Israel manages the refugee camps in the
best way possible? No. The Israeli government has the
impetus to do something, anything to protect the
populace. A governemnt that even appears to fail to do so
will be voted out in favor of one that does. This is a risk
of Parlimentary democracies, and is in fact the reason a
hawk like Sharon is in power. The situation needs to be
remedied such that a government that does not counter murder
with violence can keep its power. To do the "right" thing,
the Israeli government must watch its citizens be murdered
and not retaliate as it has recently. It is easy for us to
say that from here, but it is not when every night you find
someone you knew is dead because they felt like going out to
eat.

The black people of South Africa never claimed that they
wanted to run the white people out of the country or kill
them. They merely wanted equal standing under the law. The
situation is not the same, and to compare it
belies the murder that has been done in the name of the
Palestinian people.

The only possible solution for the Middle East is one that
creates an environment where Hamas and the like cannot
exist. An environment where Israel, the Palestinian state,
and the states around them all persecute such groups. that
environment is far off, especially since the current
Palestinian leadership supports the actions of such groups.

As long as their charter and there actions read "We will not
rest until the state of Israel is destroyed and the Israelis
are dead or gone", this will be an untenable situation.

You konw what? I don't weblog. I never weblog. I think it
is for the same reason I've slowed down entries in my
notebook: I don't want to set down for posterity some of
what I am thinking.

It might offend some people. It might reach just the wrong
ear. Heck, it might just be too personal. I guess there is
a problem with not venting, but quite frankly, I find the
alternative even more dangerous.

Why are they giving up their weapons? The Palestinians have
proved that if you kill enough innocent people, the UN will
give you whatever you want. It would seem to me that the
IRA merely needs to blow up more people more often to obtain
their goal of a united Ireland.

I have a lot of anger. Most of it is directed at those who
did the unspeakable, but some reserved for those who would
say this country is "reaping what we sow".

I don't want to flame friends and neighbors. I don't have
the energy. I can't say what I want to say right now. It's
too much.

Instead I will leave a small part of what Dave Barry had to say.

I'm not naive about my country. My country is definitely not
always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong.
But I know this about Americans: We don't set out to kill
innocent people. We don't cheer when innocent people die.